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Thursday, April 22, 2010

ACP #8

This week on All the Cool Parts we have a very special guest - Randy Jordan from the #1 World of Warcraft podcast on the internet, The Instance.  Randy kindly joined us for an in depth discussion on the music being written for video games - and in particular the music of Jason Hayes and Russell Brower for the MMORPG, World of Warcraft.  This might surprise some of you - I mean - video game music??

The music for video games is really coming into its own (much like film music did in the last century), and is becoming a real outlet for new classical music to be written.  Millions of young new fans are being made daily because of this music, and I felt it was something worth presenting, and definitely time to stop ignoring.

This is our longest podcast yet, but well worth it.  Randy and I had a blast recording this episode, and are talking about doing it again in the future, when the next WoW expansion Cataclysm is released and we have a whole new cache of music to talk about.

If you like the music in this episode, I highly recommend going to Blizzards web site and watching the short movies from each incarnation of the game.  View the original cinematic HERE.  View the Burning Crusade cinematic HERE.  View the Wrath of the Lich King cinematic HERE.

Due to the length of this week's episode, I'm not doing an All the Cool Parts Idol installment - but look out for another one next week!  As always, if you're an emerging composer, performer or ensemble - send me music!  We actually just got our first submission from a performer, which is fantastic.  I love getting music from composers, but performers, don't be afraid to submit - I'd love to get more music from performers!

http://www.anthonyjosephlanman.com/acp/acp8.mp3

7 comments:

Jen @queenofhaiku said...

Hello!
I found out about this episode from the All Things Azeroth podcast, who mentioned it in their most recent live show.

I play WoW, and I've listened to the music from the game. It was super cool to hear the little segments from all around the game, and hear insights about it's meaning, and learn what instruments were in each piece. :)

Anthony Joseph Lanman said...

Thanks for listening Jen, and thanks for letting me know about the mention on All Things Azeroth!

Meg said...

This is great :) Thank you for putting it together. The music is one of my favorite things from WoW.

The reason I decided to leave a comment was that (re the "nonsense lyrics") I wanted to point you to the work of Adiemus aka Karl Jenkins. One of his major premises is that he has a vocalist who sings nonsense syllables as a musical instrument. The group Dead Can Dance (mostly singer Lisa Gerrard, who has also moved onto movie music) also employed this technique to great effect.

Anonymous said...

Hey!
Thanks for making this podcast! It was really interesting to hear your insights about wow music and game music in general. By the way, I'm a music student with good ears, and I know that the instrument in the Grizzly Hills-part is a high bassoon, and the string instrument sounds like a normal fiddle to me, since you can't hear the resonance-strings of a Harding-fiddle.

Thanks again!:-)

jenny said...

hi i just love classical and techno to me they r similar in many ways i love wow music cause it seems like both see ya in game

Unknown said...

Saw the link to this podcast via the World of Warcraft website and had to check it out.

I am a huge fan of WoW, and the music is one of the things that really makes the game stand out to me among all of the other MMO's that are out there. I'm so glad that others enjoy the music in-game as much as I do, and even more thrilled that you and Randy took the time to go through a bunch of it and discuss it.

Great job, loved the podcast and would love to hear another one after Cataclysm comes out!

Anthony Joseph Lanman said...

Thanks for listening Fae, and I appreciate the comment!